Here we are in the 21st century. We know that the universe is an enormous place. We're just bursting with scientific knowledge. But how are we doing with the even-bigger ideas? Our human societies seem to be erasing them, or ignoring them - maybe we think we're too busy for them.

Here on the New Christian Bible Study site, we'll buck the trend. We want to explore the big ideas that give us a framework for living better lives. Here's a start on a list of big ideas from a New Christian perspective. For each idea, there is a footnote that lists some references in Swedenborg's theological works:

1. God exists. Just one God, who created and sustains the entire universe in all its dimensions, spiritual and physical. ¹

2. God's essence is love itself. It's the force that drives everything. ²

3. God's essence comes into being, that is, it exists, in and through creation. ³

4. There are levels, or degrees, of creation - ranging from spiritual ones that we can't detect with our physical senses or sensors, to the level of the physical universe where most of our awareness is when we're alive here. ⁴

5. The created universe emanates from God, and it's sustained by God, but in an important way it is separate from God. He wants it to be separate, so that freedom can exist. ⁵

6. God operates from love through wisdom - willing good things, and understanding how to bring them about. ⁶

7. The physical level of creation exists to provide human beings with an opportunity to choose in freedom, with rationality, whether or not to acknowledge and cooperate with God. ⁷

8. God provides all people everywhere, regardless of their religion, the freedom to choose to live a life of love to God and to the neighbor. ⁸

9. God loves everyone. He knows that true happiness only comes when we're unselfish; when we're truly motivated by a love of the Lord which is grounded out in a love of the neighbor. He seeks to lead everyone, but will not force us to follow against our will. ⁹

10. God doesn't judge us. He tells us what's good, and what's evil, and flows into our minds to lead us towards good. However, we're free to reject his leading, and instead opt to love ourselves most. Day by day, we create habits of generosity or of selfishness, and live out a life in accordance with those habits. Those habits become the real "us", our ruling love. ¹⁰

11. Our physical bodies die eventually, but the spiritual part of our minds keeps going. It's been operating on a spiritual plane already, but our awareness shifts - so that we become fully aware of spiritual reality. ¹¹

Fotnoter:

5. 3. There is some image of this unity in everything that has been created. We can tell from what is presented throughout Divine Love and Wisdom that in everything created there is some image of the divine love and wisdom that are a whole in the Lord and that emanate from him as a whole. See especially Divine Love and Wisdom 47-51, 54-60 [Divine Love and Wisdom 55-60], Divine Love and Wisdom 282-284, 290-295, 316-318 [Divine Love and Wisdom 313-318], Divine Love and Wisdom 319-326, 349-357. I have explained in these passages that Divinity is present in everything that has been created because God the Creator, who is the Lord from eternity, brought forth the sun of the spiritual world from his actual self, and by means of that sun brought forth the whole universe. This means that that sun, which is from the Lord and is where the Lord is, is not only the first but the only substance of which everything is made. Since it is the only substance, it follows that it is present in everything that has been created, but with infinite variety depending on function.

[2] In the Lord, then, there is divine love and wisdom; in the sun that comes from him there is divine fire and divine radiance; and from that sun come spiritual warmth and spiritual light, with the two making a single whole. It follows, then, that some image of this whole is present in everything that has been created.

This is why everything in the universe is based on what is good and what is true and in fact on their union, or (which amounts to the same thing) everything in the universe is based on love and wisdom and on their union, since goodness is a matter of love and truth is a matter of wisdom. Love in fact calls everything of its own good, and wisdom calls everything of its own true.

We will see now that this union is present in everything that has been created.

6110. 'For the famine was extremely serious' means desolation. This is clear from the meaning of 'famine' as an absence of good and of cognitions, dealt with in 1460, 3364, 5277, 5279, 5281, 5300, 5579, 5893, so that 'the famine was extremely serious' is desolation, 5360, 5376, 5415, 5576. As regards desolation, it should be recognized that truths and forms of good, together with cognitions of them, compose the spiritual life of those who are in heaven. They are the celestial and spiritual foods that nourish them; and these foods are given them every day by the Lord. When it is morning with them forms of good are supplied, and when it is midday truths are supplied; but when evening comes they lack them, and continue to lack them until it is twilight and then morning again. Their yearning when they lack them remains so strong that their desire for them is greater than starving people's desire for food on earth. This state is meant by 'the famine' and it is a kind of desolation, though not the kind experienced by those on the lower earth, 698, 699, 1106-1113.

[2] Scarcely anyone in the world can believe that the angelic heaven can have so great a yearning for truths and forms of good, and for cognitions of them. For people whose minds are set on nothing else than gain and glory, and who are given up to worldly pleasures, will be amazed to learn that those things constitute angelic life. 'What use they will say 'are cognitions of goodness and truth to me? What life can they give me? The things that bring me life and my life's delight are wealth, position, and worldly pleasures!' But let those who speak like this know that the life these things bring is that of the body, not that of the soul, and that the former kind of life perishes along with the body, whereas the latter kind remains for ever. Let them also know that people are ill-advised if while in the world they do not give any thought to spiritual life.

[3] Further as regards desolation, it exists on account of the yearning; for forms of good and truth are accepted in the measure that they are yearned for, and when the desires created by the yearning are fulfilled they produce feelings of happiness and bliss. In the next life therefore those who pass through desolation are refreshed immediately afterwards and realize their desires; everyone there is made more perfect by means of such alternating experiences. It is a fact worthy of note that the changing times of day in the natural world - morning, midday, evening, night, and morning again - are wholly representative of the changes that take place in the spiritual world, yet with one difference. The changes that occur in the spiritual world have an effect on the understanding and the will, establishing in them the basic elements of life, whereas the changes that occur in the world have an effect on and sustain things of the body.

[4] What is even more noteworthy is the fact that it is not the Lord who brings on the shades of evening and the darkness of night but those characteristics of angels, spirits, or men that are entirely their own. For the Lord as the Sun shines and flows in constantly; but because the evils and falsities that spring from what is his own are present in a man, spirit, or angel, they turn and direct him away from the Lord. In so doing they bring him into the shades of evening, and lead the wicked into the darkness of night. It is similar to the way things are with the sun in our world. It shines and flows in constantly, but the earth by rotating on its axis turns away from the sun and brings itself into shade and darkness.

[5] These features of the natural world come about because the natural world comes into being from the spiritual world and is also kept in being from there, as a consequence of which the entire natural system is a theatre representative of the Lord's kingdom, 3483, 4939. The purpose served by the changes that take place in the spiritual world is that all who are in heaven may constantly become more perfect. Such changes exist in the natural world for the same reason, for if they did not occur everything there would perish because of drought.

[6] It should be recognized however that in heaven there is no night, only evening, which is followed by the twilight that comes before morning; but in hell there is night. Changes take place there also, but they are of a contrary nature to those in heaven. In hell morning is the heat of evil desires, midday is the itch of false ideas, evening is anxiety, and night is torment. But through all these changes night predominates; merely variations of shade and darkness are what bring about those changes. In addition to this it should be recognized that in the spiritual world the changes which take place are not the same with one person as they are with another, also that the changes there do not divide into regular periods of time because they are variations of state that produce those changes. For instead of the periods of time that occur in the natural world there are states in the spiritual world, 1274, 1382, 2625, 2788, 2837, 3254, 3356, 4814, 4916, 4882, 4901.